302 ifcinss of tbe 1Ro&, 1Rifle t anb (Bun 



whenever the energies of his mind were directed to 

 counteract it. He had been enunciating this doctrine 

 once to a friend whilst they were out sea-fishing. " But," 

 writes the said friend, " I very shortly afterwards had 

 an opportunity of witnessing a practical refutation of 

 this doctrine in his own person, for upon being bitten 

 by a conger-eel, my young friend Humphry roared out 

 most lustily." Humphry, however, might fairly have 

 urged in his defence the fact that " the energies of 

 his mind " were not at the moment " directed to 

 counteract it." 



The fame of the young Cornish genius spread to 

 London, and when he had only just entered his twenty- 

 third year he was appointed Assistant Lecturer and 

 Director of the Laboratory to the Royal Institution. 

 As a lecturer he at once met with extraordinary success. 

 His subject, Experimental Chemistry, had the charm 

 of novelty. There was a freshness and a fascination 

 about these revelations of the mysteries of Nature 

 which made them irresistibly attractive to the half- 

 enlightened, semi-superstitious curiosity of Society in 

 general, as well as to genuine searchers after truth. 

 The young lecturer became the lion of fashionable 

 London. Men of the first rank and talent the literary 

 and the scientific, the practical and the theoretical blue- 

 stockings and women of fashion, the old and the young, 

 all crowded, eagerly crowded, the lecture-room. His 

 youth, his simplicity, his natural eloquence, his chemical 

 knowledge, his happy illustrations and well-conducted 

 experiments, excited universal attention and unbounded 

 applause. Compliments, invitations, and presents were 



